1. Technical Field
The present invention is related to a technology of applying setting information edited by an editing apparatus to electronic music apparatuses. A personal computer in which software programs are installed or another electronic music apparatus provides this editing apparatus.
2. Background Art
In electronic music apparatuses, play data are fed into a tone generator to generate a musical tone, effects are imparted by an effector to the generated musical tone, volume adjustment and mixing are executed on the effect-imparted musical tone by a sound system to generate mixed musical tones, and this mixed musical tones are sounded from a speaker of the sound system.
In this process, the tone generator, the effector, and the sound system generate musical tones on the basis of various kinds of setting information represented by various types and values of parameters such as timbre, effect, tempo, and volume (the types and values of parameters will hereafter be referred to simply as “parameters”).
These various kinds of setting information may be edited by users in accordance with particular pieces of music or in accordance with each user's preference. The editing may also be executed in electronic music apparatuses. However, use of music application programs having editing capabilities in personal computers allows the use of a wide display monitor and easy-to-operate input devices such as keyboard and mouse, thereby significantly enhancing the efficiency of editing works.
To realize this high-efficiency editing, it is required to connect a personal computer which functions as an editing apparatus to one or more electronic music apparatuses to transfer edited setting information to these electronic music apparatuses.
The transfer of music data files and setting information files from one electronic music apparatus to another electronic music apparatus or from the personal computer to the electronic music apparatuses is conventionally executed by use of the file dump transfer based on “realtime universal exclusive message” of MIDI standard. However, the transfer rate based on the MIDI standard is slow and therefore it takes long time for even small-sized files to be transferred.
Recently, along the popularization of personal computers, electronic music apparatuses have come to use USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface having high transfer rates. However, the use of the USB interface requires the installation of dedicated drivers in personal computers and electronic music apparatuses to transfer data on the basis of dedicated protocols, thereby complicating the configuration of the associated software, which in turn lowers the substantial transfer rates.
On the other hand, recent personal computers allow direct access to flush memories incorporated in peripheral devices. For example, digital cameras have come to have the USB interface based on USB mass storage class. As for personal computers, their operating systems have become compliant with USB mass storage class on their part without necessity of installing new drivers.
Each of the above-mentioned flash memories is recognized on the personal computer side as an accessible drive. Hereafter, such a memory device equivalent to a conventional disk drive is referred to as an open drive. As a result, personal computers can access external flash memories incorporated in external devices as easily as internal flash memory incorporated in the personal computer themselves.
Therefore, the USB interface capable of externally accessing flash memories is desirably arranged on electronic music apparatuses so as to easily transfer various kinds of setting information with the flash memories of the electronic music apparatuses handled as open drives.
However, since electronic music apparatuses are of various models, their capabilities differ from model to model. For example, conventional electronic music apparatuses include synthesizers, electronic pianos, electronic organs, and other devices consisting simply a tone generator and an effector or only an effector. In addition, electronic music apparatus models may adopt different methods of generating tones or imparting effects. Therefore, different models require different kinds of setting information. Even if general format of the setting information is common in the same model, individual electronic music apparatuses require different settings in accordance with musical parts for example taken by them.
Consequently, if the setting information of a particular electronic music apparatus is inadvertently set to another electronic music apparatus of a different model or product, problems may be caused that music tone signals could be generated or unintended music tone signals would be generated for example.
A technology is known in which a personal computer is connected to electronic music apparatuses and, when a change in the connection takes place while the power is on, initializes the electronic music apparatus to which the new connection is detected (refer to patent document 1). Namely, the personal computer sends a basic initialization message to the electronic music apparatus connected to the output terminal of the personal computer.
Next, the personal computer sends an identity request to the electronic music apparatus and receives an identity replay therefrom to identify the maker and model for example of this electronic music apparatus. Then, the personal computer sends the optimum initialization data to the identified electronic music apparatus.
However, the above-mentioned prior-art technology only initializes electronic music apparatuses. Therefore, the personal computer cannot transfer and set any setting information edited for each individual electronic music apparatus to that electronic music apparatus.
In the above-mentioned prior-art technology, the electronic music apparatus is not compliant with the USB mass storage class. Therefore, it is difficult for the personal computer to access an internal memory device of the electronic music apparatus. Obviously, the prior-art technology does not consider a counter measure for preventing the malfunction of the electronic music apparatus due to an access error, which might occur when the access to the internal memory becomes easy.
Patent document 1 is Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 11-212554.